The Vantage Point
by theCalliope
Summary: Nog sees a little too much around the station...


One of the things that people never tell you about working in engineering is the way you get to know the place you're working backwards and forwards. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. A good thing because you find all sorts of forgotten useful places, like stores of tools you can trade for starship parts, or replicators that never have line-ups. The bad part is that you find out that everyone else thinks they've found such places, although the truth is they are in plain view of air vents or maintenance conduits. It drives me nuts how everyone thinks they've found their own secret private place, when really they'd know it's not if they had two eyes on them.

Like the Ward Room. If you ever got a chance to look around, you would notice it has air vents, windows and a curved entrance, so that you can't always see when someone's coming in. It might actually be the least private place ever. But of course, no realizes this. No, no,  
sex in the Ward Room is everybody's favourite fantasy. I usually like to stay out of there, but this one time I was working in the conduit above and dropped a self-sealing stem-bolt, a valuable part I knew I could trade for an extra hour of exercise time. So I crawled down into the space between the conduit and the ceiling and started looking when Commander Dax and Major Kira pranced in. I tried not to listen to their conversation, assuming it was top secret war stuff, but I soon realized that they were not there for professional reasons. Amidst the yelling and grunting, I tried to think of an escape, but unfortunately, I had planned to drop through the vents in the ceiling tiles once I had found my bolt. I decided the best thing I could do was wait quietly,  
and hope I wasn't heard.

I had a feeling that walking in on your two commanding officers going at it was one of those severely career-limiting things you can do in Starfleet, like turbolift racing or destroying a starship by smoking jangoweed on near the warp core. It made me think of how on one of my first days as a cadet I walked in on Captain Sisko picking his nose, and told him that my cousin Gayla sold the highest quality Risian nose-picks at a reasonable price. When he turned to me, he looked so embarrassed that I realized that like sex,  
nosepicking is something that most aliens pretend they don't do even though they do it all the time. But at this point, I was wiser, so I knew I had to stay cramped between ceiling tiles, reciting the Rules of Acquisition in my head until the debauchery below me stopped. When I went back to work two hours later, Chief O'Brien could tell what had happened from my horrified face and admonished me.

"I told you that if you're working anywhere near the Ward Room you should play loud music so that people will hear you," he said, shaking his head.

This would be great advice if only the Ward Room was a problem, but it's not.  
A few months ago, Mr. Garak put in request for some repairs for his tailor shop, and of course I got assigned to do them. When I got around to it, the shop was closed for lunch, but I didn't worry about it, and went right in. I mean what could possibly be the harm. It's not like I was going to accidentally stumble upon some top secret spools of thread or some classified cuff links.  
I realized my mistake as soon as I heard the muffled groans from behind the change room curtains. I turned to walk away, but Mr.  
Garak yelled,

"Just a minute," and after an eternity of rustling he and Dr. Bashir emerged.

"We were just ... gasp ... fitting ... gasp a very difficult bow-tie .  
gasp,"

he continued. I decided this statement had as much credibility as almost anything else he said.

I guardedly told Chief O'Brien this story, and he just shook his head as usual, and said,

"That's not the worst place you'll see."

He was right. There is one place that is undoubtedly the worst on the station,  
a place we engineers call 'the vantage point.' It is dimly-lit, private-looking nook at the end of a corridor. Or at least it would be private, except for the fact that the control panel for the waste extraction system is located on a platform right above. I've considered showing this place to my uncle, just due to the sheer variety of sex acts you can witness.  
I can only imagine the titles of the holosuite programs he would come up with.

"Andorian male gives human female 'the antenna'"

"Romulan wonders why Klingons have ridges. Finds out."

"Two Bajorans. One Vulcan. Zero shame."

The chief has tried his music trick here as well, and it works for the most part.  
Sometimes, though, a couple still comes in, thinking the music is their own private make-out mix. It drives me nuts.

The more I work in this job, there more I think there is no limit to alien stupidity. The thing that annoys me the most is the way that people see you in your repair gear and assume you're just a piece of furniture and ignore you.  
It was my dad who first told me about this phenomena.

"Today," he said, "I was repairing a toilet, and a guy just walks in and starts using it, like I wasn't even there. I had to get up and turn to him and say,  
excuse me, I'm repairing this toilet."

The funny thing is that I'm sure that story doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. I remember one night, I was sleeping, and Dr.  
Bashir paged me over the Com system. I get to the infirmary, and he says he's sorry, but the biobed is leaking hyposaline all over, and he needs it fixed before the morning rush. I crouch down and start fixing it while Dr. Bashir is working on the computer, when suddenly Commander Dax rushes in, looking extremely worried.

Keep in mind, she actually had to step over me to get to the Doctor, so she knew I was there, and could have easily asked me to leave, or moved the conversation elsewhere. Instead, she decided I was a potted plant and walked right over to the doctor.

"Julian," she said, "I really need your help."

"What with?" he replied kindly.

"I ... I think I'm pregnant... "

"And you want to be examined? Or need some medication for swollen spots?"

He seemed wary of Dax's sudden cry for help.

"No," she said blushing, "I need to find out who the father is."

"I can do a genetic scan of the fetus and run it against every man who's been on the station," Dr. Bashir replied, suddenly sounding very professional, "Of course, it would help if you could give me an idea of where to begin."

"Uh, well, I think it migh be Worf or Captain Sisko or Gul Dukat or General Martok"

"No, it's not any of those," he responded after a minute, and continued scanning. Finally, he looked at her and stated,

"It's Admiral Ross."

"Well that's easy," she replied, sounding in higher spirits.

"Easy?" the Doctor asked, "What are you planning?"

"Well, since it was just one night, it's simple enough just to travel back in time and prevent it from happening."

"How do you plan to do that?"

"Well, since I forgot to take my birth control then,  
but have taken it now, I figure I can go back and take the brunt of the physical stuff,  
while the other me holds my hair back or something"

"Don't you think Admiral Ross might notice he's screwing two of you and report you to the temporal control board or something?" Dr. Bashir seemed frustrated at Dax's scoff-law tendancies.

"Men never report stuff like that," she replied saucily, "I know, I've been one three times."

Dr. Bashir shrugged, and I could tell he knew she was right.

"I suppose you'll need my help making the jump back"  
he sighed.

"I'd really appreciate it," she sang, smiling.

"Fine," he said without expression, "come back when you're ready."

"Thank you, Julian," she said, kissing him on the cheek and skipped out of the infirmary.

I felt this was a bad time to stand up and say,

"Your biobed's ready, sir," so I just snuck out as soon as he started swearing about why he ever helped that girl in the first place.

This was not an isolated incident. Dr. Bashir is notorious for inviting me in and then forgetting me, leaving me to witness things ranging from personal conversations to surgery.  
But the worst situation, by far, was when he had his genetically engineered friends over.

Of course, I spent most of my week catering to their demands.

"Can't you hear that noise with your big ears? It's driving me crazy"

"You might be an inferior alien, but I can clearly taste that the levels of replicant in this food are 0.01 to high. Go fix it."

"Humans shower with water, you know. Don't you have any showers that pour water on this station?"

But the worst part was listening to them talk. You see, with Serena gone, there was only one female for the two men, which was an immense source of argument for them. At first,  
they both wanted her for themselves, meanwhile, the girl, who was pathologically hypersexualized wanted them to share her. Eventually,  
they agreed to this, but then they became obsessed with the fact that while the girl had three bodily orifices,  
there were only two of them. It became a constant topic of conversation.

The universe is expanding, we are all going to die.  
Stupid humans are losing the war for us.  
We are inadequate for our friend's bodily orifices. The universe is expanding, we are all going to die. Stupid humans are losing the war for us.  
We are inadequate for our friend's bodily orifices. This is how their conversations cycled for days on end.

Eventually, they were arguing about this so loudly (  
while yelling at me that there was too much dust in the air ), that I considered calling security. That's when Dr. Bashir walked in.

"Our problem is solved!" one of the men declared. I left. Quickly.

One day, when I have stable assignment, I am going to return to the homeworld to get married.  
When I do, I am going to be sure to ask the girl involved a few key questions.

"Do you think men ever fall in love with men?"

"Have you ever seen a dirty holosuite program?"

"Do you ever consider having sex with aliens?"

If she says yes, I'll make a bid on someone else.

When we get married, we'll have a lot of missionary-style sex, in our quarters, and when we're feeling kinky, we'll go to the holosuite and have a picnic. Or go to the beach. Or anything else that's remotely normal.

And when it comes time to repair our quarters, I'll do it myself.


End file.
